Читать книгу The Broken Souls - J. Kerley A. - Страница 11

Lucas stood in the piss-stinking service station restroom, door locked, and foamed restroom soap over his torso, patting dry with rough paper towels. Once more he counted his money, tight clean bills, over a thousand dollars’ worth. Seed money. The next step was to turn it into working capital. A quick way of doing that was to find and supply a product for which there was great demand.

He could get product. What he needed was a distributorship.

Lucas studied the face in the grimy mirror: nothing but black eyes and round hole of mouth deep in a sea of black hair. Scary, hideous even, like he’d escaped from hell. But then, how else was he supposed to look?

Lucas scowled into the mirror, bared his teeth like a rabid dog, growled. Snapped his teeth at his image.

What’s that face mean, Lucas?

Dr Rudolnick’s voice suddenly in Lucas’s head.

“It’s how pissed off I am, Doctor.”

“You look angry enough to kill, Lucas. Are you really that angry?”

“I guess not, Doctor. Not today, at least.”

“Good, Lucas. Let’s do some deep breathing and visualizations, all right?”

Lucas laughed and tucked the shirt into his pants. He opened the restroom door. Lights in the distance, bars, clubs. Lowlife joints with lowlife people, the kind of folks attuned to nontraditional distribution networks. Something in the automotive segment of the market.

The nearest bar, a hundred feet distant, had a window blinking LUCKY’S in green neon script. Maybe it was an omen.

Lucas stepped out into the night, music playing loud in his head, snapping his fingers to an old funk piece by Bootsy Collins, “Psychoticbumpschool”. He angled toward Lucky’s.